


Window to the soul

by silvercolour



Series: Takarazuka prompts [5]
Category: Takarazuka Revue Musicals, The tale of Tatsu-no-Miya | 龍の宮物語 - Takarazuka Revue
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, F/M, Sad, Vague spoilers for the plot and the ending, aka very sad, canon-typical sadness, they’re in love but that doesn’t make it any easier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:47:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24504880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvercolour/pseuds/silvercolour
Summary: It couldn’t have been anyone else, she thinks.
Series: Takarazuka prompts [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1781578
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: Guess the author Round three





	Window to the soul

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Takarazuka Guess the author game round 3, word limit 500 words, prompt: ”it had to be you”
> 
> Check out the other fills in this collection, there’s a lot of them!

Tama-hime knows the moment she sees him – even as a child.

It had to be him.

They’re clearly related, Yamabiko and this child, although they do not much resemble one another. Yet there is something in their spirits –a drive, a heart– that makes them seem almost like brothers, even across the years that separate them.

When he offers to show her those flowers, and again when he saves her from those brigands, Kiyohiko shows that same spirit as the last human who caught her attention.That same tenderness.

She wishes he would not.

Things would be easier if he didn’t.

He does it anyway, saving her without a second thought for his own safety.

As a sign of her gratitude she takes him to Tatsu-no-Miya. Not because she wants to, not in the slightest. She knows its inhabitants will see the kid as a new toy at best, or a danger at worst. She brings him because she has to – anything that happens this close to the lake would be noticed.

She’s certain someone would have come to save her as well, except they did not have to. Kiyohiko already saved her.

It is this kindness that also wins favor in Tatsu-no-Miya; most people like him – but only as a toy, not as a person. The ones who dislike him are those who have always disliked humans. She can feel Hoori’s glare across the cavernous hall, and though he hides it behind an unfeeling mask she senses her husband’s disdain.

And Tama-hime fears for him. She fears for the kind, selfless boy who saved her. She fears his fate, more than she fears her own.

So she sends him back to… well. Not quite back home – not quite back to safety. But she gets him back, to his own world, and makes sure he is safe, and prays that she never need see him again. 

Her prayer goes unheard.

* * *

Kiyohiko does not know it, but it had to be her. There could have been no one else.

From the moment he promised her flowers, many – so many – years ago, he was lost. Lost, and found again by her charm and her ethereal beauty, which seemed to cover a strength that could move mountains, given the right reason. 

He sees now in her eyes a kindness that she does not allow her words or her actions to show, and he wonders if perhaps he has known that kindness too was there all along.

* * *

When he returns to the lake where it all began, and he feels the first raindrops that start to fall, he knows. He knows that what he saw in her eyes was indeed kindness.


End file.
